Table of Contents
Variable:
The Missionary Kids’ Value Scales (MKVS) contains 18 measures of the value constructs of religiosity, worldmind edness, and commitment to justice, as well as different aspects of the cross-cultural context of individuals who have grown up overseas. The specific value constructs measured are Religiosity, Religious Orthodoxy, Religious Action, Attitudinal Worldminded ness, World Systems, Social Distance, and Justice Commitment. The contextual scales are Religious Interaction as Youth, Religious Interaction at School, Religious Inter action in the Home, Cross-Cultural Involvement as Youth, Cross-Cultural Interaction in School, Leadership, Justice Interaction as Youth, Parent-Child Relationship, Teacher Student Relationship, School Involvement, and School Rating. The measure was created specifically for use with children of missionaries in Brazil (referred to as “missionary kids” or “MKs”), although it can easily be modified for use with MKs from other countries or other individuals who have lived cross-culturally.
The value scales make up the core of this instrument and will be reviewed briefly here. The Religiosity scale is a measure of a person’s commitment to his or her religion. It is operationalized in this measure as commitment to the specific beliefs, values, and behaviors of evangelical Christianity. Religious Orthodoxy is a measure of the degree to which a person agrees with the beliefs of orthodox Protestant Christianity. Religious Action is a measure of a person’s willing ness to return overseas, either on a short term basis or for an indefinite period. The Attitudinal World mindedness scale mea sures attitudes and behaviors that demonstrate acceptance and tolerance of people from other cultures and value systems. World Systems measures a person’s attitudinal acceptance of differing concepts of national identity. Social Distance assesses an individual’s willingness to become socially involved with different ethnic and socioeconomic groups, on a continuum ranging from minimal social contact to intermarriage. Justice Commitment is a measure of a per son’s reactions to the poor and needy and is operationalized as frequency of actions to help these groups in the past 12 months. Particularly noteworthy among the contextual variables is the Crosscultural Involvement as Youth scale, which is a measure of behaviors and attitudes that demonstrate involvement with the foreign culture in which the individual has lived.
Description:
The measure is heterogeneous in that it is not intended to measure a related group of constructs. Rather, its intent is to survey many areas relevant to the life experience of individuals who live in other cultures during their formative years. Of the 18 scales, only 6 are explicitly religious (Religiosity, Religious Orthodoxy, Religious Action, Religious Interaction-Youth, Religious Interaction-School, Religious Interaction Home). The remaining scales address behaviors and attitudes related to living in a different culture. The Religiosity and World mindedness scales can be combined to mea sure the construct of World Christianity. This construct is not widely used in the social sciences but has commonly been used in evangelical missiology in recent years. Individuals who demonstrate an expanded view of the world (in contrast to ethnocentrism) and a commitment to the values of historic Christianity are considered World Christians.
The religiously oriented scales were con structed on the basis of items developed by King and Hunt (1972, 1975), Fichter (1954), Glock and Stark (1965), Bibby and Brinkerhoff (1973, 1983), and Brinkerhoff and Mackie (1985). The World mindedness items were drawn from a scale developed by Sampson and Smith (1957). Several contextual variables were drawn from the International Mobile Student Questionnaire developed by the Institute of International Studies at Michigan State University. For several of the scales within the overall measure, particularly the religiously oriented ones, similar scales exist that have been much more extensively validated. The present measure does, however, make a unique contribution. Its primary value lies in the comprehensiveness of the constructs surveyed, providing in one measure an array of constructs relevant to international populations. Researchers in this area can make use of individual scales as well as the complete measure.
Most items are forced choice and utilize a variety of types of 4- and 5-point Likert scales, including “strongly disagree” to “strongly agree,” “never” to “very often,” and “yes, definitely” to “no.” A smaller number of items require rank ordering and yes/no answers. Each of the subscales is scored separately. No special instructions are provided for scoring.
Practical Considerations:
The MKVS is a paper-and-pencil measure that does not re quire special examiner skill for administration or interpretation. No instructions are provided for the subject, as each item is self-explanatory. The face validity of the measure is high, as each scale clearly relates to the construct it attempts to measure. Given the heterogeneity of the measure, one disadvantage is that the relationship of the different scales to each other is not clearly articulated. However, use of the entire instrument is not necessary. An additional dis advantage is that many of the subscales have a variety of answer formats, which is awkward both for the respondent and for measurement purposes.
Norms/Standardization:
The measure was normed on 533 adult children of Brazil missionaries, representing a 60.8% response rate. The population was 49.9% male and 50.1% female with a mean age of 26.3 (range 17-43) years. Fifty-four percent were married. Ninety-nine percent stated that they were raised as evangelicals, and 97.3% considered themselves to be “born again.” They had lived in Brazil for an average of 12.4 years. Professionally, they represented a range of occupations, with a large number in the religious and management categories. Educationally, 56.9% had completed college degrees and 33.6% were still students. The population with which the complete mea sure can be used is limited, as it is aimed at adults who have lived cross-culturally and have attended Christian schools. The fol lowing descriptive statistics were reported for this sample: for Religiosity, a mean of 52.0, with a standard deviation of 8.87; for Religious Orthodoxy, a mean of 23.41, with a standard deviation of 1.62; for Religious Action, a mean of 5.97, with a standard deviation of 1.77; for Attitudinal World mindedness, a mean of 17.38, with a standard deviation of l .88; for World Systems, a mean of 4.42, with a standard deviation of 1.41; for Social Distance, a mean of 21.26, with a standard deviation of 4.33; for Justice Commitment, a mean of 7.80, with a standard deviation of 2.21. Descriptive statistics for the remainder of the scales are available in the source reference.
Reliability:
The internal consistency of the scales was estimated using Cronbach’s coefficient alpha. The values for the scales were as follows: Religiosity, .93; Religious Or thodoxy, .86; Religious Action, .81; Attitudinal World mindedness, .64; World Systems, .59; Social Distance, .93; and Justice Commitment, .66. The Religiosity, Religious Orthodoxy, Religious Action, and Social Distance scale alphas indicate good lower-bound estimates of scale reliability for research purposes. The remaining scales have marginal internal consistency. These figures do not support the use of this instrument for the testing of individuals, with the exception of the Religiosity and Social Distance scales, which have high reliabilities. No test-retest reliability data are reported for this measure.
Validity:
Each scale was submitted to an exploratory factor analysis using principal factoring with iterations. An eigenvalue of 1.0 or higher was used as a cutoff, although “Religious Interaction in the Home” had an eigenvalue of .75 but was retained as an exploratory variable. Loadings of the individual items varied from .38 to .89. All items that did not load on the first factor of each scale were dropped, reducing the total number of items from 171 to 88. The first factor explained 100 percent of the variance for each scale, except Religiosity in which it ac counted for 92.7 percent. All scales demonstrated internal consistency coefficients of .60 or higher except “Religious Interaction in the Home” (.45). The factor analysis of the scales provides moderate support for the construct validity of the individual scales. The relationships among the different scales, in the form of correlations, are available in the source reference. Convergent and divergent validity data are not reported for this measure.
One validity issue that is not addressed by the author is the uneven weighting of items in scales that have several response formats. For example, the Religious Interaction-Home subscale has three items, two of which have 4-point Likert scales, whereas the remaining item is in a yes/no format. Summing the responses to arrive at a total score gives greater weight to the 4-point Likert items. While the MKVS is a helpful tool for measuring multiple variables of interest to those in missiology, the variety of constructs and ways of measuring them do present some measurement difficulties. Further reliability and validity testing seems in order as researchers use this instrument in the future.
Location:
Sharp, L. W. (1990). How missionary children become world Christians: The role of the MK school and the local culture. Journal of Psychology and Theology, 18(1), 66-74.
Sharp, L. W. ( 1988). Patterns of religiosity, world mindedness, and commitment to justice is sues for Brazil-experienced missionary children (Doctoral dissertation, University of Calgary, 1987). Dissertation Abstracts International, 49(2).
Subsequent Research:
No further research has been done utiliz ing this measure.
References
Bibby, R. W., & Brinkerhoff, M. B. (1973). The circulation of the saints: A study of people who join conservative churches. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 12, 273-283.
Bibby, R. W., & Brinkerhoff, M. B. (1983). Cir culation of the saints revisited: A longitudinal look at conservative church growth. Journal for the Sci entific Study of Religion, 22(3), 253-262.
Brinkerhoff, M. B., & Mackie, M. (1985). Reli gion and gender: A comparison of Canadian and American student attitudes. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 415-429.
Fichter, J. H. (1954). Social relations in the urban parish. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Glock, C. Y., & Stark, R. ( 1965). Religion and society in tension. Chicago: Rand McNally.
King, M., & Hunt, R. ( 1972). Measuring the religious variable: Replication. Journal for the Scien tific Study of Religion, 11, 240-251.
King, M., & Hunt, R. (1975). Measuring the re ligious variable: National replication. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 14, 13-22.
Sampson, D.L., & Smith, H. P. (1957). A scale to measure world-minded attitudes. The Journal of Social Psychology, 45, 99-106.